Was the use of the word ‘skills’ in that article an oversight? If you read it something obvious occurs; a subtle differentiation between what skills and talent look like. The article points out that skills are a talent acquisition issue.

This is true for two reasons. First, it’s just hard to find talented people. Talent refers to having a natural aptitude or ability, while skills speaks to having a bent towards acquiring expertise in a given area. Second, we need lots of talented people but we then need to invest in those people to ensure that they acquire the specific skills for the specific job we’re asking them to perform.

Consider

Get all the talent you can but then focus on ‘up-skilling’ and ‘re-skilling’ as a strategy to ensure people are applying their talent in specific ways.

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I'm the founder and CEO of Emergn. I'm a hands-on executive with over 25 years of experience in building global services models for companies around management consultancy, program management, transformational change and professional services strategy. I'm passionate about helping people change the way they work, innovate and deliver, and developing business leaders.